Why I didn’t like the How I Met Your Mother Ending

I know for a fact I am not the first person to not like the How I Met Your Mother Ending. Fans even petitioned for a rewrite and reshoot of the ending after it aired in 2014. The reason being that the ending came as a complete and utter shock to the viewers. The show ran for 9 seasons and was orchestrated in a form of flashbacks, as Older Ted tells the story to his teenage children of how he met their mother. The show established through many failed relationships, and side commentary on Ted’s behalf that not one woman compares to The Mother. He scripts this retelling as a form of destiny-like meeting between the two, unveiling all that led them together and all the similarities that they share. Yet, somehow, in the last episode she is killed off and he ends up with Robin. His off-and-on girlfriend throughout the show. Admittedly, Robin and Ted were quite the pair. And you would be lying if you didn’t once root for them to end up together. But the main fork in the road for them as a couple lies with the fact that Ted is obsessed with the dream �" marriage, kids, and a house. Whilst Robin, on the other hand, wants none of this. She is a career-driven woman who loves scotch and cigars. And we love her for this. However, Ted and Robin come to this marriage crossroad many times in the show, and their views never waver. Which is why the ending seems like a bit of an insult to Tracy �" The Mother. Not only do they kill her off after establishing a 9 season show circulating around her relationship with Ted. But they do so, to make way for Robin and Ted getting back together. That is pretty lame writing, if you ask me. 

The show revolves around many friendships and relationships, that grow and evolve as they show progresses. Lily and Marshall really set the bar for relationships in this show. They are introduced as college sweethearts, whom have only had sex with one another. They progress in the show, overcoming many trials and tribulations, such as Lily having cold-feet at their first wedding attempt, their fear of infertility, financial debt, and so-on-and-so-forth. In the Pilot alone, the couple have been together for a decade already. During which, they established many traditions such as the ‘what you ate today’ tradition or Lily exchanging local beer for getting picked-up by chauffeur Marshall at the airport. They even brand each other with the most adorably, cheesy nicknames �" Marshmallow and Lilypad. The two even coordinate their Halloween outfits every year; in a flashback we see Marshall dressed as Cher and Lily as Sonny. I could go on forever, listing everyway they are the perfect couple. But I will leave it with that brief glimpse into their relationship… 

How I Met Your Mother follows Ted finding himself the equivalent relationship to Lily and Marshall’s. We see him date many women; most of which he does not click with. We do see him, fall in love a few times with Robin, Victoria, Stella, and Zooey. However, they are not the Lilypad to his Marshmallow. Some more clearly than others, *cough* *cough* Stella. Throughout his retelling of how her met his wife and mother of his children, a tension is created when he starts to piece together The Mother’s timeline and his own. We see The Mother and Ted unknowingly come across one another’s paths throughout the show. In the episode, Girls versus Suits, Ted goes to pick up Cindy for a date, of whom is revealed to be The Mother’s roommate. He gets excited over three things in Cindy’s room: a bass guitar, the Unicorn’s �" ‘Who will cut our hair when we are gone?’ album, and World’s End by T.C. Boyle. All of which, belong to her roommate, The Mother. This develops an unwavering compatibility between Ted and the Mother, prior to them even meeting.

The episode entitled, How Your Mother Met Me, further establishes a chemistry between Ted and The Mother. Older Ted’s retelling of the experiences that led her to meet him follows this almost destiny-like discourse. The episode begins with Kelly �" Tracy’s friend �" mistakenly going to the wrong Maclaren’s bar, where we see Ted and Barney picking up girls in the background. The episode jumps forward to when Kelly invites Tracy to a St. Patrick’s Day party where she brings her yellow umbrella. Anyone die-hard How I Met Your Mother fan will know that Ted also attends the same St. Patty’s Day party and ends up taking her yellow umbrella home. Another exhilarating moment is when Tracy sits in Ted’s first lecture as a new architecture professor, granted he was in the wrong classroom. But it creates this connection between the two characters that the viewer needed. The same episode lists many parallels between The Mother’s timeline and Ted’s. Such as, ‘Save The Arcadian’ posters at her band performances, the Puzzles bar misunderstanding, and The Naked Man play from Barney’s Playbook. Throughout not only this episode, but many of the episode of the last season especially, The Mother is depicted as a perfect match for Ted. They both have similar interests in calligraphy, coin collecting, and renaissance fairs. If that is not love, I don’t know what is… 

All jokes aside. Older Ted really does paint this impeccable image of his and Tracy’s love. He describes her ‘Breakfast Muffin’ song as “the most hauntingly beautiful” thing he has ever heard; when he first overhears her rendition of ‘La Vie En Rose’, he cannot comprehend the feeling it provokes within him; and as Older Ted suggests The Mother laughed at his shellfish joke. That is an incredibly cheesy Dad joke, that he made in the episode, Double Dates. An episode that doesn’t feature The Mother, but in one of Ted’s commentaries to the episode he tells us about it as the girl he originally told it to, didn’t laugh. All these connections that Ted makes between himself and Tracy either via visual depiction or side commentary to his storytelling, conveys this almost-absolute fairy-tale ending. It’s only a matter of when they meet, not if. This further creates an illusion of tension for the viewer, with all the connections and anecdotes he portrays. So, when the viewer finally witnesses this long-anticipated fairy-tale ending, only to find out Tracy dies, and Ted ends up with Robin. The phrase, “I am not mad, just disappointed” really comes to mind. 

Especially since, the last two seasons of the show are dedicated to the proposal, and marriage of Barney and Robin… These two have also been robbed of an immaculate ending. Robin and Barney are all too similar; they both are career-driven, love scotch and cigars, and don’t see weddings or babies in their future. Their chemistry is off the charts as well. As we see in the episode, Zip, Zip, Zip, when Robin takes on the duties on being Barney’s wingman. As friends, at the time, they ‘suit-up’ and meet at a cigar lounge where she orders a Johnny Walker Blue and a Montecristo No.2. Plus, they finish the night by playing Laser Tag. 

This not only acts as a spark to their later relationships; it also is the first time the viewers see the chemistry Robin and Barney share. Fast forward to the eighth season of the show, Barney performs his final play of his Playbook, The Robin. Where he professes his love to her and proposes to her in the most over-the-top, Barney way. It really is legen-wait-for-it-dary, legendary! Furthermore, the final season of the show is an episode-by-episode directory detailing the before, during and after of the couples’ wedding, from all the characters perspectives as narrated by Older Ted. Yet, in the final episode, they divorce after three years of marriage. Only for Ted to snatch Robin back, as a divorcee to one of his best friends and after his wife had died. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sit right with me… 

How I Met Your Mother will forever be one of my favourite, and most binge-watched shows, however I will never forgive the writers for the ending they gave to us. The ending completely defies and contradicts the whole plot and premise to the show. And the way they deliver this ending is in a segment of events shoved together in the last portion of the final episode. At least if they were going to do a complete 360 on us, couldn’t they have spaced it out and given it some context and pre-amble to this unprecedented ending? It is one of those plot twists that just doesn’t sit right with the viewer. Or maybe that it just me… 

Author's Note

Disclaimer: this piece as suggested above will have spoilers to the ending of the show, HIMYM.